The Virtual Stoa

Elizabeth Wright Macauley, actress, feminist and Owenite socialist. After twenty years as an actress, going “from one low-paid and badly reviewed theatrical production to another” [ODNB], she joined the Owenite co-operative socialists, their emphasis on gender equality being “well suited to Macauley’s insubordinate temperament” [ditto]. “Women have too long been considered as playthings, or as slaves”, she said in 1832, “but I hope the time is at hand, when we shall hold a more honourable rank in the scale of creation”. The ODNB also reports the useful information that she gave acting lessons to a group of French Saint-Simonians visiting London in the early 1830s, which sound fun. Born in York around 1785, she died, also in York, 22 February 1837.

Annie Barnes, née Cappuccio, socialist and suffragist. Involved in suffragette activities in East London from 1912 (on one occasion scattering leaflets from the Monument in London), she joined the Labour Party in 1919 and served on Stepney Council 1934-7 and 1941-9.  Born c.1887, probably in Stepney, died in East Ham, 22 February 1982.

Jennie Baines, suffragette. Growing up in the Salvation Army, she found her way into temperance and then into suffragist activism. She joined the WSPU in 1905, and became a paid organiser in 1908. Briefly imprisoned in 1908, she attempted to burn down the Theatre Royal in Dublin in 1912 ahead of a speech by Asquith, and was sentenced to seven months hard labour (but went on hunger strike and was released after five days). Back in prison the following year after allegedly attempting to bomb train carriages in a railway siding, she was eventually acquitted, and emigrated in Australia, where she carried on with her militancy, campaigning against conscription and flying the (banned) red flag — being jailed again on both occasions. She helped to found the Victorian branch of the Community Party in 1920, was expelled in 1925, and rejoined in ALP. Born in Birmingham, 30 November 1866, she died in Port Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, 20 February 1951.

Tony Crosland, Labour politician, Cabinet Minister and author of The Future of Socialism, back in the days when being on the revisionist wing of the Labour Party entailed a commitment to a politics of equality. Born 29 August 1918, died 19 February 1977.

Georg Büchner, playwright, propagandist, fish scientist; born 17 October 1813, died 19 February 1837.

Catherine Carswell, née Macfarlane, novelist and critic. Became a socialist at 14 after reading Robert Blatchford; married Herbert Jackson, who later became mentally unstable, and the Jackson v Jackson annulment case (1908) was an important one until the marriage law reforms of the 1930s. She made her way in London literary life with an epistolary novel, The Camomile (1922), a demythologising Life of Robert Burns (1930) and The Savage Pilgrimage, a portrait of her friend D. H. Lawrence. Born in Garnethill, Glasgow, 27 March 1879, died in the Radcliffe Infirmary, Oxford, just round the corner from me, 18 February 1946.

And while we’re on the subject of the New Statesman, here’s Kingsley Martin, who edited the thing for thirty years, 1930-1960, back in the days when it was a moderately important publication. Born Hereford, 28 July 1897; died in Cairo, 16 February 1969.

Hugh Dalton, Labour politician; born Neath, Glamorgan, 26 August 1887; died St Pancras, 13 February 1962.

Gustav Bergenroth, historian and Saint-Simonian. A ‘48er, he later emigrated to California in 1850 to found an agricultural commune at Pillar Point, 20 miles south of San Francisco, but returned to Europe a year later. He settled in London and became a Tudor historian and an expert on the Spanish state papers of the period. Born in Treuberg, East Prussia, 26 February 1813; died in Madrid, Spain, 13 February 1869.

Paul Levi, Spartacist, born 11 March 1883, died 9 February 1930.

Pyotr Lavrov, Russian philosopher of narodnikism, born 14 June 1823, died 6 February 1890.

Ernest Bader, industrial reformer and Quaker. After emigrating to England in 1912 and deserting from the armed forces in the First World War, Bader founded a chemical company in 1920, which became Scott Bader Ltd. This later became the site of several experiments, culminating in the Scott Bader Commonwealth from 1951, operating on Gandhian principles of industrial trusteeship and co-operative ownership. Born in Regensdorf, Switzerland, 24 November 1890, died in Wollaston, Northamptonshire, 5 February 1982.

G. E. M. de ste Croix, author of The Class Struggle in the Ancient Greek World. Born 8 February 1910; died 5 February 2000.

Robert Tressell, author of The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists; born in Dublin, 18 April 1870; died in Liverpool, 3 February 1911.

Helena Molony, Irish feminist and nationalist actress. She joined Inghinidhe na hEireann after hearing Maud Gonne speak and became editor of Bean na hEireann, a militant feminist journal in 1908. An actress at the Abbey Theatre, 1909-1913, she was arrested in 1911 for protesting against George V’s visit to Dublin. She worked closely with James Connolly before 1916, helped to found the Irish Citizen Army and fought in the Easter Rising. After internment in England, she returned to Ireland in December 1916, joined Cumann na mBan, and opposed the Treaty in 1921. She devoted herself to labour movement activity after the civil war, and was President of the Congress of Trade Unions, 1936-1945. Born in Dublin, 15 January 1883; she died in Dublin, 29 January 1967.

Franz Mehring, biographer of Karl Marx and Spartacist, born in Schlawe, 27 February 1846, died in Berlin, 29 January 1919.

Ruth Cavendish-Bentinck, suffragist and socialist of illegitimate aristocratic origins; she moved in Fabian circles; opposed vaccination; and became active in the Women’s Social and Political Union; she later established the Cavendish-Bentinck library for sufragists (now a part of the Women’s Library); and in later years became keen on Stalin’s Soviet Union. Born in Tangier, 21 October 1867, she died in London, 28 January 1953.

Ben Tillett, trade unionist and one of the leaders of the 1889 dockworkers’ strike; born in Bristol, 11 September 1860, died in London, 27 January 1943.

Arthur Penty, socialist architect and furniture designer, who, after falling out with the Fabians over, inter alia, the proposed new LSE building, went on to become a significant influence on the Guild Socialists, later drifting into Christian Socialism, thence to, um, support for Mosley, Mussolini and the nationalists in Spain. Born at York, 17 March 1875, died at Isleworth, Middlesex, 19 January 1937.

Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, French anarchist socialist, born 15 January 1809, died 19 January 1865. He never really did manage to get on with Karl Marx.

Ethel Bentham, doctor, suffragist, Fabian, member of the Labour Party’s NEC, magistrate and MP for East Islington from 1929 until her death. Born in the City of London, 5 January 1861 died in Chelsea, 19 January 1931.

Sylvain Maréchal, Babouvist and author of the Dictionnaire des Athées, born 15 August 1750, died 18 January 1803.

G. D. H. Cole, Fabian, Guild Socialist, and the first holder of the Chichele chair in Social and Political Theory at Oxford (though, curiously, this fact isn’t mentioned in the recent advert for the post, which mentions the various other incumbents); and (with Margaret Cole) author of detective fiction. Born 1889, died 15 January 1959.

Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht, murdered in Berlin, 15 January 1919.